A podcast about the work of David Deutsch, Karl Popper and related matters.

The gender pay gap, St George in retirement syndrome, the virtues of equality before the law and freedom of choice. Clip from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzqMKniVVy8

St Patrick's Day random reflections and questions from across the interwebs.

Thursday 16 March 2023 Livestream - Patreon and Twitter Questions and Science News Articles discussed: JWST news: https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-star-soon-go-supernova-photos Volcanoes on Venus: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2023/03/15/venus-is-volcanically-active-right-now-say-scientists-using-32-year-old-images/?sh=7e868b8fd11f Plagues in Africa killing amphibian: https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/03/15/a-skin-eating-fungal-plague-is-silently-tearing-through-wildlife-across-africa-scientists-warn/?sh=3086d9573f02 ChatGPT4: https://www.forbes.com/sites/gabrielasilva/2023/03/14/the-chatgpt-debate-are-we-intelligent-enough-to-understand-intelligence/?sh=2246e1c684f2

Reading a short chapter from "What's Eating the Universe?" by Paul Davies titled "The Big Bang" - and adding some exposition and commentary. Also: AMA as time permits. As always I do not monetise anything (there are no ads/I get zero income from youtube) - but if you'd like to support me just go to www.bretthall.org and follow the links to donate. Also the "superchat" feature in Youtube is something that would get to me.

A response to this article: https://www.ecosophia.net/blogs-and-essays/the-well-of-galabes/the-clenched-fist-of-reason/

AMA and more

This is the second part of a two part series. Here we focus exclusively upon "It from Qubit" (2002) by David Deutsch as found here: https://www.daviddeutsch.org.uk/wp-content/ItFromQubit.pdf I read and comment upon the paper, unpacking its significance for physics, epistemology (i.e: the search for good explanations), metaphysics (ultimate reality beyond what science tells us) and compare this vision of reality to alternatives (for example as presented in the "It from Bit" thesis by Wheeler. The Simulator Hypothesis makes an appearance as does some of the mechanics behind quantum computation itself. But, overall, this is a work stranding physics and philosophy namely: what the former can tell us about having an informed explanation of the latter. To that end both Einstein and Popper are quoted by Deutsch herein.

This is the first in a two part series unpacking, breaking down, reading, reflecting and commenting upon David Deutsch’s paper “It from Qubit” available here: https://www.daviddeutsch.org.uk/wp-content/ItFromQubit.pdf or here https://philpapers.org/rec/DEUIFQ or even as the chapter of a Barrow and Davies book here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/science-and-ultimate-reality/it-from-qubit/BA7B507C25C37B180FC34802555D4423 I will be referring to the Chapter of the book (that matters as you will hear!). This, the first part, lays the groundwork for discussing “It from Qubit” by first discussing the thesis that went before, coined and explained by John Wheeler: It from Bit. Wheeler, as you will hear in this episode, had an absolutely astonishing “life in physics”. Here we discuss that man, his view and the science and philosophy of “It from Bit”. As a teaser recognise that Wheeler supervised both Richard Feynman and Hugh Everett, collaborated with Einstein and Bohr and is named as one of the two biggest professional influences upon David Deutsch by David Deutsch (references herein).

Here we discuss the inherent differences between classical and quantum physics. Systems representing both can exhibit "unpredictable" behaviour - so what is the difference? In classical physics chaos theory is a genuine phenomena - but only in theory. The real world does not obey classical physics. It obeys quantum theory and there, that kind of "chaos" simply does not happen. The Butterfly effect is therefore false in reality for reasons explained herein. Those classical effects cause classical systems to be unpredictable due to the sensitivity of systems to initial conditions which cannot be specified, or known, with perfect precision. But quantum systems can be "intractable" making them unpredictable for different reasons. Rather than being a barrier to knowledge and computation this is an opportunity. We discuss Feynman and then Deutsch's own contribution to the field of quantum computation.

What could we say to the people of the year 3025 that might be of use to them? Given they should know everything we know and far, far more I see only one situation where any knowledge we possess would be found insightful to them. So here is my discussion of all that.

This video is about Chapter 1 of David Deutsch's "The Beginning of Infinity". I go through the book in detail, a chapter at a time. The quality gets better. This was my first ever attempt at this. If you would like to support this endeavor, do consider making a one off donation by clicking the "Donate" button on the front page at www.bretthall.org or you may like to subscribe (contribute automatically each month) at https://patreon.com/BrettRHall